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It is all the more amazing, therefore, in a state which by most outsiders would definitely be considered one of the last bastions of male chauvinism, that the Lord Mayor of the capital city, Brisbane, should be, of all things,
a woman.
Liberal Alderman Sallyanne Atkinson shot to international fame during her city’s bid to host the 1992 Olympic Games, and in the process has forged herself a name as an exceedingly rare phenomenon: a woman who can cut the political mustard in a heavily, almost totally male-dominated arena, and still maintain her charm, femininity, common sense and good humour.

Charismatic, a word possibly debased by current casual usage, would not be out of order to describe this undeniably personable and charming lady. Women who make it, against the odds, have never ceased to fascinate me. I personally have never harboured even the remotest political ambitions, basically I suppose because I am fundamentally apolitical, and also because after thirteen years working in international organisations I have developed a healthy cynicism as to where real power lies, and who is pulling policy strings. Seldom do politicians, except the few hard-nosed ones who muster the guts to make radical reforms in a post-landslide election honeymoon, generate the force to swim against a relentlessly efficient, self-protecting and self-propagating civil service. MI5/Heinemann case watchers must now have come to the alarming conclusion that much of the real power in so-called democratic countries resides in the hands of a group of bureaucrats who feel themselves in no way accountable either to government, the electorate or indeed even to one another.

But we digress. Many male politicians evince fairly unedifying motives for seeking office. Some genuinely must feel that they are capable of doing something for the common weal, but many seem to be in the business for the endless possibilities of self-aggrandisement and lucrative scams. Others feel, in passions of self-righteous zeal, that they know what is best for you and me, beliefs which I find perfectly unnerving. Motivation in the case of women, I would suggest, is often far simpler: they see what an appalling cock-up men have historically made, and feel, quite rightly, that they could do the job far better themselves.

In most instances there is very little which is venal, shoddy or second-rate in women politicians. In the European Parliament, for example, the institution of which I have most experience, there is a distressing quota of men who are avowedly in politics (if one can so describe what transpires at the European Parliament) for the rake-off, for the quick buck, for the far-from-niggardly expenses. There is little of that sentiment in the female contingent. Popular and gregarious Scottish Nationalist Winnie Ewing, for example, who represents the largest Euro-constituency, embracing the entire Highlands and Islands, actually loses money in her tireless efforts to visit all her constituents. In an entirely different political mould, there is former Labour Cabinet Minister, Barbara Castle, who despite her septuagenarian vintage remains impeccably well-groomed, and intellectually capable of knocking most of her rival Tory Young Turks, or yuppity young Socialist whippersnappers into a cocked hat. And, operating in quite a different political sphere, there is of course the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, whom French wags maintain is the only man in the British Cabinet. Consonant with Darwinian concepts of evolution, the fittest women in politics certainly look more capable of survival than an increasingly emasculated bunch of men.

From our British Iron Lady, we move back to Brisbane’s Iron Frangipani, as Sallyanne has been so appositely named. She finds it all a huge joke, and is wearing a pair of frangipani earrings, enamel on gold, not exactly iron, but the self-deprecating humour is evident. Whereas a Margaret Thatcher or a Simone Veil would be reasonably labelled attractive women, Sallyanne Atkinson is positively pretty. Her bubbling sense of fun is also an endearing attribute those two remarkable political doyennes might do well to study. Gravitas never ranked particularly highly on my scale of human values.

I was the first visitor to her plush new suite of offices in City Hall, an impressive building built in 1930 which had been left to gather cobwebs since a previous incumbent vacated it some six years prior, and had subsequently been virtually locked to the public. The lady Lord Mayor had decided that this majestic edifice should be returned to the people of Brisbane, and should once again become a place where people want to congregate, ‘a place which is warm, welcoming and alive’.

The storm clouds were starting to gather, however, with criticisms of overspending and wasted ratepayers’ money.

‘Oh, I’m used to all that,’ remarked Sallyanne, unperturbed. ‘When I was trying to convince the International Olympic Committee that the Olympic Games should come to Brisbane I was obliged to travel all over the place, and people complained that I was never at home looking after the garbage collectors’ dispute! We have now put Brisbane on the map. At least people know where we are, and how to pronounce the name.’ (
Bris
-bun,
not
Brisbane.)

Sallyanne is nothing if not a pragmatist. Of course she was disappointed that Brisbane had failed in its Olympic bid, but at least the episode had given her the opportunity to promote the city and the state.

‘One of my strengths is that I can see the best in everything,’ she admitted, as we looked at her collection of memorabilia, stopping over one of her prize exhibits – a bowlful of Scottish stones. Were those from her recent visit to Edinburgh, where she had handed over the Commonwealth Games flag to the luckless Scottish organisers? Brisbane had successfully hosted the games in 1982, and had hoped to use much of the existing sporting infrastructure to accommodate the Olympic Games.

‘Oh, no,’ she corrected my mistaken conclusion quickly, ‘I’ve had those since the days when we lived in Scotland, at a time when my husband (a neurosurgeon) was doing a stint of his training in Edinburgh. One of my daughters was even born there, on the National Health, and we let her keep her British nationality in case she ever wanted to swim for Scotland.’

Sallyanne’s face erupts into smiles, at the aberration of the thought, and she starts to giggle. ‘Unfortunately the Scottish swimmers got a lot better, and now for my daughter to be able to vote here in Australia, she will have to be naturalised.’ She paused for a minute, obviously consigning that comment to some mental in-tray, a chore to be dealt with at a later stage.

By now the interview had developed into a tête-à-tête chat. We laughed about the aggressively new and extremely inappropriate visual display unit sitting defiantly white against the ceiling-to-floor leadlight windows overlooking King George Square. In amongst the 1930s furniture and light fittings, made to the design of the originals, it looked as incongruous as an outer-space man in the Long Room at Lord’s. We both pretended to be computer-illiterate, the sort of games women play when all around them are men knowing only half as much as they do yet claiming to be experts.

‘I think these things are counterproductive,’ she remarked mischievously. ‘Instead of the men in the office popping their heads around the door and giving you a message, they are all now busily sending one another memos on their computer terminals.’

It would appear that Sallyanne shares my doubts about men ever really growing up.

‘I think women make ideal politicians,’ she continued. ‘I came into politics after I had raised a family and looked after a husband. When you’ve spent a few years with a baby in one arm, a toddler hanging on to your skirt, trying to stir the peas, stuff the chicken, open the door and answer the phone you have an excellent grounding in trying to deal with twenty people and a hundred problems all at once.’

I think that here, Sallyanne has put her finger on one of the reasons why so few women make it to the top, and the very reason why they are such forces to be reckoned with if they do. Men are basically mono-conceptual. They tend to compartmentalise their day, their feelings, their thinking and their performance. We are all aware of the phenomenon of the man who slams the door behind him in the morning, entirely capable of forgetting his wife and his kids while he is in the office, completely capable of forgetting the office while he is on the rugger or cricket field, and more than totally capable of forgetting the lot of them while he is in the pub. A woman, meanwhile, has to play a juggling act with various interwoven lives throughout her normal day. If she has a career, even if it is as intellectually demanding and lucrative as her husband’s, it will nevertheless be
her
responsibility to think about making a detour to the supermarket before traipsing home, organising Susie to visit the orthodontist to have the expensive ear-to-ear scaffolding checked, and ensuring that Johnnie gets to his lethal jiu-jitsu class on time. Women rarely get to the top of the pile because of all these important yet trivial interferences in their lives. Women who have the energy to be world-beaters after these multifarious demands on their time and attention are generally unstoppable.

We are apparently now witnessing a new breed of man, however – Sensitive Man, the sort of man who helps with the children or considers giving the wife a hand with the dishes when he has been playing darts in the pub or punting in the betting shop all day, and she has just returned from Sainsbury’s, the launderette and an eight-hour session lecturing in astrophysics. These chaps are already coming in for a lot of flak from the old macho types. Rumours abound that these softies use pH-balanced soap bars, exfoliating skin rubs, foaming face cleansers, astringent tonics and – is there no end to it? – moisturisers. Malevolent machos go so far as to suggest that these sensitive types even go down to the off-licence to fetch their own beer during
Match of the Day
. I mean, why else did the good Lord create women? Anyway, if Sensitive Man is alive and doing well somewhere, it must be recorded that he has not yet reached the portals of the Edmonds’ household.

Men, of course, are not always the severest critics of high-profile women. It is often women, under-achieving women frightened that their comfortable and undemanding role as second-best is being tacitly questioned by the Sallyannes of life, who are the most vicious. Certain types of redundant female who have nothing better to do with their lives than go to the hairdressers and organise their wardrobes are quick to pounce on outstanding members of their own sex. ‘I’ve had women complain that they saw me wearing the same dress on two consecutive days, and that I was always wearing the same colours,’ remarked Sallyanne, patently unconcerned. She had been, at the time, heavily involved in the final do-or-die-bid for the Olympics, lobbying in Lausanne for the East European vote, and giving stand-up interviews from six in the morning. I thought I ought to mention this, because re-reading what I have just written, in a quick burst of feminist furore, it might seem that I have little time for men. In effect, nothing could be further from the truth; some of my best hairdressers have been men. No! My utmost contempt on the contrary is definitely not reserved for any sort of man, but for a certain type of woman. She knocks around, even in cricketing circles. Oh, you will never have heard of her, of course; she will never have done anything of note in her life, except perhaps marry someone of whom she has become an added accessory. She will never have put her name to an article or a book, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the unattributed bitchy quotes in gossip columns will have come straight from her. Sweet as pie to everyone, she will grease up to selectors and committee men and do regular hatchet jobs on players and wives alike, or organise some feature artiste to do the dirty work for her. No, you have probably never heard of these females. They wear their doting maternity as a badge of care and concern, but from personal experience we all know these are the true vipers in any confraternity’s bosom.

All politicians must, of course, learn to inure themselves to criticism. The good ones will listen to fair comment and disregard the rest, and the bad ones will disregard the lot. Not that listening to too many people is the best course of action either. Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, with his apparent policy of government by opinion polls, is at present doing little to impress the solid Labour base which originally swept him to power. As Lord Mayor of Brisbane, however. Sallyanne Atkinson is accountable directly and immediately to her electorate, and is proving a popular choice. Formerly a journalist, she has naturally winning ways with the media, and an engaging stock of anecdotes and accents. She relates with wry amusement her early days as a freelance reporter for some local Edinburgh paper, when for want of a babysitter she was obliged to drag the children along to an interview with some suitably august (at least in his own mind) municipal dignitary: ‘I could see him thinking, “who on earth is this woman?”’ she recounts. Neither does she mind giving a very passable imitation of French Prime Minister and Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac. All French men love a pretty lady, and few pretty ladies are entirely unsusceptible to the intoxicating power of full-strength Gallic charm. Sallyanne and Jacques formed a mutual admiration society during their respective unsuccessful quests for the Olympic Games, and the suave Gaullist even promised to visit Brisbane should the Lady Lord Mayor’s bid succeed. ‘A mayoralty, more than any other political office, represents something specific,’ explained Sallyanne; ‘the Mayor is very much the symbol of the town. Chirac is inextricably connected with Paris – in everybody’s mind sophisticated, special’.

She too, this bright, warm, vivacious and engaging lady has become a symbol of a new Brisbane, a forward-looking Brisbane, a city aiming to develop along the right lines to attract and encourage family businesses as well as vast corporate investment, to become the thriving heartland of a major tourist industry. ‘I admire our premier because he encourages private enterprise,’ she claims. ‘We are now witnessing a worldwide drift to the sun, aided by the fact that modern technology means people no longer need to live on top of their work. The recent expansion and investment in Queensland has been phenomenal.’